Why Goodbye Volcano High is a Trainwreck 

It took me 14 minutes of this review to realize all the character were meant to be dinosaurs, and it wasn’t just the triceratops.

As a dinosaur nerd, the designs for this game genuinely cause me to experience physical pain.

There's a scene in Goodbye Volcano High where Fang and her brother learn that their parents can't return home so they have to face the crushing reality that they might die and never see their parents again. This is immediately brushed aside in a scene that lasts like five minutes.

You don't understand: they've managed to translate grindy and slow turn based combat into voice acting. Its a brand new type of experience

"It feels like fanfiction for a source material that doesn't exist" is literally the best way to describe this

The fact that 4chan made better version of this game in shorter amount of time really says a lot about the quality

As a furry myself “A school of teenage dinosaurs going through emotional drama and then are taken out by the asteroid” sounds like a joke ending, and I’ve seen MANY joke endings.

I think there's a genuine art, no matter how many people want to disagree, to making anthropomorphic characters not look like uncanny abominations. This game fails that

It’s funny how Dumbsville’s avatar is Obi Wan, but the thumbnails make him look nothing like Obi Wan

Regardless of quality, I think it's really funny that the *entire* script was in the files for the demo

...Actually, I recently heard a rumor that the story's original plan was for the ending to vary based on Fang's social achievements throughout the story - that is, the meteor fragments more and more if they do good. Better endings would result in less damage to the world, the best being a beautiful meteor shower. That...would have actually been good and fitting for a setting like this! Kinda sucks that Kate Grey, the original lead writer who probably came up with this plan, was caught doing a Big Oof and had her contributions to the writing scrubbed out...Even if it isn't a HUGE improvement, it would still result in more hopeful endings than what we have here.

As someone who knows people in the furry community to draw some damn good reptiles, I'm blown away that the designs could be so poor for this game.

I feel like its gonna get to a point where Dumbsville's gonna actually make his own choice based game.

The fury I feel for those designs is unmatched. There are so many ways you could go about making anthro dinodaurs, but THIS is not it.

You forgot to mention one of the more interesting elements of this saga. The game was tax payer funded. The short of it is Canada has programs that give money to art projects and in some cases games can qualify. There have been quite a few interesting and controversial games funded this way. One of the most unusual cases was an anarchist themed fallout tactics mod that involved a live roleplaying session, with tax payer dollars funding both a french and english version. Both of the mod and the live roleplaying.

It's kind of sad because, in my eyes at least, I think the idea of a bunch of dinosaur teenagers going to high school and playing music while dealing with an ominous meteor falling towards them is a really cool idea. But then they designed it like this, and I had to laugh as Dumbsville talked about his horrible experience with it. If I knew how to create a plot really well and could re-design games well, this would be a game I wish I could fix.

I could have gone the rest of my life knowing this didn't exist. At least Dumbsville helped to make it slightly more bearable.

I would have been more interested if over the plot of the game, different people reacted to the meteor in wildly different ways. Spending times with loved ones, losing their marbles, choosing to die on their own terms, with a larger emphasis on you choosing what to spend the last days of your life doing. Do you spend it with your family? Do you ask someone out and die in their arms as the meteor hits? do you blow your brains out? There was potential here but it just didn't hit any mark i was hoping for it to hit. Back to Snoot for me

The title: goodbye volcano high My brain: good biblecano high

The millisecond I saw this game nominated in the Game Awards I knew this was 100% an industry plant

my only exposure to this game was seeing fanart of the main character shooting the rest of the characters

Games like this are pretty much always going to be perpetually ten years out of date because this style of “OMG SO QUIRKY” storytelling you see in games like this and Life is Strange was never in date to begin with.

The only piece of dinosaur media where I don’t cry at the extinction of the dinosaurs, but instead cheer.

Making a visual novel buggy feels like an impressive level of incompetence.

You never fail to make me watch a 30 minute video on something I have never even heard of

Gotta love when the choices in the choice based game don’t matter at all

The ending with the security guard shooting the woman made me spit the water I was drinking out of shock and laughter! HOLY SHIT I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT OUTCOME AT ALL!

One thing I liked about snoot game was the more traditional family Fang had. When I played GVH it seemed to me like that would be a plot point when reading the note in the beginning but it just goes nowhere..probably because the devs won’t even entertain the idea of the discussion even though they’re clearly going for the “my family doesn’t understand me” game

this whole game is like a rollercoaster ride with a choice of routes but all the routes converge to one where they tell you to your face "you couldn't do anything"

Fewer endings than Snoot Game, the parody /v/ made in a fraction of the time Fewer endings than Tsukihime which came out two decades ago Fewer endings than Life is Strange which is infamous for how little your choices matter on the ending Fewer endings than Doki Doki Literature Club which is built to railroad you into the designated ending. Look, I get they animated it, which was probably the most labor intensive part of their visual novel, but at that point just sell it as a cartoon instead of interactive software.

Night in the Woods is genuinely what this game and Life is Strange wish they were

people should stop pushing "your choices matter" and instead push how you'll develop an emotional connection with characters based on your actions. it's not only more intellectually honest but it's also closer to what these MFs ACTUALLY want

Honestly I'm just stuck wondering how Yakuza 5 managed to be a better story driven rhythm game about a struggling musician in a segment that lasts only 2 chapters and doesn't even explore it's subject thoroughly enough.

I'm loving this guy's admiration for making peak content.

The idea of dialog options glitching out when you try to pick them/just being locked would be so much better in a horror game *cough cough* DDLC

There should be a new choice driven high school game about regular ass dinosaurs like not anthropomorphic at all they just grunt and roar with backpacks on

"The opposite of love isn't hate its indifference." Damn Dumbsville didn't know you were a philosopher.

The fact that Snoot Game, a fan game made during the production of GVH, is loved so much more than GVH to the point of GVH's developers being salty towards everyone that brings up the fan game... That is just hilarious. In fact, it's what made me interested in this game's drama.

The Canadian media fund gave 1.2 MILLION DOLLARS to fund this game. For reference when the developers of Darkest Dungeon applied for funds for DD1 they were Denied.

The fact this game got nominated for any game award at all is insane to me

The D&D segments felt like it was there for padding. It's like they realized the main story was short and went "We can't ship a game that's like 3 hours for $30. Quick, get someone to add assets to this game." Like the game is fully voice acted, but they have this D&D segment where everyone speaks like it's The Sims or Animal Crossing. It honestly felt like something that was made for another game.

For those of you wondering what the game is at the end of the video its called "Class of 09" and you should defenitely play it and guess what it has actual choices that matter and effect the story in meaningful ways.

This game negatively affected my mental health. Not even joking, as someone who went through some stuff in life and go to high school this game just made me depressed. The characters being cartoonishly nice and the looming threat of death knowing all the characters would literally be 1945 Nagasaki at the end just gives me mixed emotions. Not only that WASTED MY TIME(just playing a 10 hour game which I played only 4 hours because I didn’t want to waste my time to get a auto bad ending was spiting in my mouth). This is just a perfect example how to NOT make a story game, at the end of the day this is why telltale will be in gaming history for making the PERFECT story games. And overall great review dumbsy

I remember seeing an ad for this, I saw the character designs and just sat there wondering, wait, those were dinosaurs?

It is actually kind of bizarre that a parody game made by horny furries on 1d4chan is better than the actual gane. Then again. When does 4chan NOT surprise me?

You know what makes the end of the game even better? The fact that all dinosaurs dying is a lie, there's a difference between mass extinction and complete extinction and I can't help but feel like If the developers wanted to, they could have made a more When the wind blows kind of story, but with a more hopefull ending, perhaps instead of all of them dying, some of the main characters survived and decide their own ways or to stay together, as friends, as family, and continue to live on even in a world of ruins, such an ending would have been much better, because it would make a good parallel between the primal instinct for which all creatures have, continue and will exist on this earth, and on us, humans, those who end up replacing them, because whatever and no matter how much society controls us, it means nothing, you as a human are free decide who you are and how you live your life and that matters, but nah, slap LGBT there like an ad, make everyone get fucked and call it a day, It bothers me that they didn't even try to look at a book about prehistory or speculative evolution and make a world that is an eye candy to see Btw, can we all agree that Fang's thumbnail design is far better than the actual one? At least I can figure out what dinosaur it wants to be

a game where your choices apparently matter just has one ending... this could've easily been fixed by having the main character spend their last moments with different characters before they inevitably die depending on the choices you've made throughout

My favorite part from this game was when Turok the son of stone came in and yelled out “I AM TUROK!”

It's a bit sad if we consider that Snootgame, the parody made by 4chan, used the same characters (The SG characters are a copy and paste of the character sheets from the official GVH page) and made a more interesting story with more charismatic characters who turned out to be quite complex and you really manage to sympathize with them.

Meanwhile the snoot game, that 4chan parody, is actually good with interesting story about empathy and 4 ENDINGS

You know a game is bad when it makes you go "hey, maybe Life is Strange really isn't as bad"

I like that dumbsville reviews a little bit of everything. Animation. Music. Movies .videogames

6:26 since Dumbsy is bringing this up, I have to remind that Fear and hunger, a game made with RPG maker, which is the equivalent of a calculator powered by a potato, manages to have an insane level of detail, especially the second game, not to mention that they are mostly made by One guy, a very talented guy of course, but still, Vulcano high had a larger crew working on the product, so it’s just odd how the game was launched in this state. Although this can also derive from the fact that the development team has been heavily attacked for extremely stupid reason, that’s certain to bring someone’s moral down, so I can’t just dish out criticism without putting that in consideration, but still, I’ve never seen a game distort so badly on a screen, not even Cyberpunk at launch day.

Even when it comes to character design, there are two things anyone can ask: 1. Why are the characters' wings not connected to their arms? What dinosaur has literal angel wings, or, I guess more accurately for the real creatures, griffin wings? What's that? You don't want to account for that when making outfits for the characters? Well then, don't use flying reptiles. 2. Where are the long necks? All the characters have similar neck lengths, so I'm assuming there just isn't any long neck dinosaurs. Did dinosaurs commit a racism? It sounds like they committed a racism.

holy shit, I never knew there was an actual meteor in the ending. Fucking hilarious the school shooter ending in the parody is actually a happier ending.

Apparently, Kate Gray was involved with this game as a writer before she was let go due to people finding about about her Kotaku article that is a creepy Harry Potter roleplay fanfic.

Why does the DND parody have a better artstyle than the actual game lmao

They look more like dolphins than dinosaurs

the fact that 4chan made a better version of this game and it still dropped before the real game is insane

"Can we have Snoot game?" "No, we have Snoot Game at home" - Snoot game at home:

Funny how a parody game made by 4Chan has a better story than the actual game

A choice based game where all the characters die at the end can still have multiple endings. Maybe if you're nice to everyone it's a bitter sweet death. If you spend all your time being an asshole it could end with the main character facing her death surrounded by no one they're by her side simply out of courtesy. And since the world is ending I feel like that would influence all characters in different ways. One could decide, fuck it nothing matters any more so I'm gonna do what ever I want. One could try to spend what time they have left with the people around them. One could deny it at first and try to live their life like they were before only to have to face reality toward the end. That could have definitely filled up a six hour game if properly explored.

I honestly thought Goodbye Volcano High was cancelled until I saw your video thumbnail just now Dumbsville. A shame the game didn't stay cancelled all things considered.

The only reason Snoot Game is controversial is because of KO_OP being childish and pissy about the game to the point of banning any mention of it on their Discord and that Kotaku article that's clearly paid by them to slander the game. The game is actually more than just a parody, it has genuine heart put into it with an actual, legitimate heartfelt story it wants to tell, it's not just one edgy joke after another (while there are edgy jokes, it's not the entire game and it knows when to be serious), and it's not as politically charged or hateful as these articles and KO_OP claim. Update: I apologize for the shitshow that my comment chain became. Thanks a lot Floofmother, you ruined it for everybody!

As a heterosexual homo-Sapian often confused with being somewhat of a “scalie” as they call it, I am embarrassed to even be somewhat vaguely associated with this.

The last chapter is literally all the characters remembering the meteor that’s gonna kill them all is still coming, going “Guess I’ll die,” and moving on with their High School Musical ass ending.

I find it humorous that the character looks better in Dumbsville's Thumbnail than anywhere else in the game. (Whoever you hired to make the Thumbnail for you Dumbsville knows how to make good looking Thumbnails.)

The only thing i have to thank this game’s existence, is that inspired the making of snoot game, a far more touching, mature and funny vn

With a premise of a choices based game where the ending is inevitably the end of the world, no matter what you choose to do, you could do so very many cool things. You could use the entire game as a nihilistic metaphor, saying that no matter what you do, at a cosmic scale, it doesn’t matter at all. And off of that you can make a story about a group of teens deciding to make the most of the little time they have left, and growing to be okay with how useless their actions are. With the meteor, you could also tackle the idea that the things they care so much about, in the end, are fickle and meaningless. The big concert, in the face of the death of everyone, is really not a big deal, and it doesn’t matter who goes, or who plays.

snoot game supremacy

The pterosaur deigns are pure pain. Why make her the same color as a dolphin? Why give her six limbs and angel wings?

4:00 SNOOT GAME MENTIONED 🗣🚨🗣🚨🚨🥹

I'm no game designer but I thought A game about a meteor coming to kill everyone would've been a story about a: Socially inept person deciding that they wanna try to make friends out a choice of deciding to hang with 1 or 2 individuals in a presuming failing and falling apart society, and achieving true friendship in a limited number of days with a timer constantly reminding you that you have limited impactful choices before everyone FUCKING dies. and The ending would've been the results of who you decided to die with. And they did highschooler drama over such a simple and easy to execute idea? Like I said I'm no game designer but this idea would've been much much better.

Lmao that class of 09 clip at the end. A smaller game but one where you can actually make significant story choices. It also has the mystical power of funny in it too.

I did think the main character was a dolphin when I clicked on this.

I think i'm not gonna be the first one to say this but i think the harassment wasnt because of the gender of the characters but because of a writer. When the game was announced one of the writers revealed she was working on the game and people decided to do a background check on her and they discovered she was a reporter for kotaku and most of her news where just sexs mods or anything related to sex and seeing how this game is about teens a lot of people specially from 4chan decided to demand that the writer be fired from the project which she was but as a result they had to rewrite everything she wrote

Me when I have to say goodbye to volcano (idk I haven’t seen the show)

Yep, the comments are right. Play Snoot Game instead. It's free, has a better story and better characters

What do me, Micheal Jackson, and Goodbye Volcano High have in common? We all have the same birthday.

Am I the only one who gets annoyed when random features of the character designs just change or disappear? Some of the characters with weird mouth fangs lose them everytime they talk, the main characters tongue goes from forked to pointed in random scenes, and I swear they just place the horn on Trish wherever they want

I personally don't dislike the artstyle myself, but I can certainly see some of the complaints. It feels like they wanted to make a show- Not a game. I feel like this should have been a 10-12 episode short series exploring darker themes, gender identity and social politics with the threat of death looming on the horizon. They could have given people hope, built up that maybe there was a way to stop the meteor and then tear it all away, leaving the viewer feeling depressed by the end, similar to Devilman Crybaby, The End Of Evangelion & more.

Remember Don't Look Up? I know a lot of people hated that movie but at least the threat of everyone dying was treated very seriously

The ending of the video gave me more emotions than the actual game itself. Good job man

From what i remember when the game was announced. The original narrative allowed you to choose who your love interest was depending on your choices with certain characters. Did they really just rewrite the entire narrative so a questionalble self insert could be the love interest at the end of the game?

Am I only the only one thought the main character was a dolphin

This a "shut up, you dont have a talking stick" kind of dialogue

They don’t even look like dinosaurs

2:18 why do they always make trans characters look like neon overdosed pastel cutesy not like other girls submissive (I’m sorry but submissive is the most SFW word I can describe the vibe with) nerdy snowflakes. Is it not physically possible for these people to draw a trans person that looks like they actually perform productive tasks and pay taxes? This design trend just pisses me off because you can spot the trans character from five miles away, that character shouldn’t be bullied for being trans, they should be bullied for that haircut In all seriousness, I like trans representation in games, but this design trend needs to die, everyone looks like they buy healing crystals off of Facebook marketplace

Someone give that asteroid a medal. That man is the MVP of this story.

You know the gaming industry is fucked when 4CHAN makes a better game in less time for free, then makes a better game than that for half the price of what the free one was based on.

I remember how the game was bullied on the internet when it was annonced, what a time

I am more angry at the fact that these humanoid dinosaurs do not look accurate to the actual dinosaurs they are based off of. You could do so much with their designs, play with shapes, behavior and personality. But instead they look like humans wearing weird make up. Also, why does the main snoot girl have feathers!? I know some dinos did have feathers, but not pterodactyl!!

Jesus Christ I was not expecting that ending

“Dont fight the hand that feeds you, amaright?” hardest line ever

I LOVE watching analyses of media I didnt know existed before the video was posted

Virgin Volcano High vs Chad Class Of 09. Either that or i've been stuck in this fucking stan twitter rabbit hole for too long.

Didn't the developer used to work for Kotaku where she had shown 3d child... "art" in an article? There are some good reasons why people were angry at these developers.

I feel like the characters should've found out that the world was ending at the beginning of the game so the whole game could be about these highschoolers trying to cope with their inevitable and soon to come deaths. Have the game explore the existential topics that come with contemplating death. Doing that would have made the game much more compelling.

You know it takes a certain amount of skill when a fan game somehow does better than your game

bruh seeing someone attempt to play a guitar with such long nails hurts me emotionally and physically even if its just animated